High Cost Of Beatles Cds Stirs Controversy

New Beatles Cds Come At Steep Price

It wasn't until a road-show version of the Broadway show "Beatlemania" in the early '80s that I first heard the term.

It was from a girl sitting behind me during the intermission, complaining of the show's song selection. "They didn't play anything from the `Blue Album' yet!" she whined.

"Yeah, everything was from the `Red Album,' " her friend concurred.

The eavesdropping mind boggled a bit. Had their copies of the "White Album" been discolored or otherwise repainted?

Then I remembered, vaguely, the double albums of Beatles hits, released in 1973 and divided roughly into periods.

"The Beatles/1962-1966" was bordered in red; "The Beatles/1967-1970" was bordered in blue.

To firsthand Beatlemaniacs, of course, they meant nothing.

It was cute to see the before-and-after stairwell pictures on each volume. In one, the young Beatles stare down from a shot on their first British album, "Please Please Me" (the U.S. version of the album, "Introducing the Beatles" on Vee Jay Records in 1963, had used another shot). Revisiting the site, at London's EMI House just six years later, the longer haired, mustachioed and world-weary Beatles meant to use the shot to adorn their back-to-basics "Get Back" (but which didn't appear when it came out as the Phil Spector-remixed "Let It Be").

As for the music, anyone interested in the Beatles already had all these songs on the original albums anyway. Original fans admired the fact that along with commercial endorsements, the Beatles, while they were around, didn't do greatest-hits albums.

But for a younger generation of rockers who found out about the Beatles sometime after their 1970 breakup, the two double-albums were their doors to the music without dropping a pile of money on the entire collection.

Like the other eventual reissues of Beatles tunes in different configurations -- "Love Songs," "Rock 'n' Roll Music" and "Reel Music" -- there's nothing surprising about the selections.

Certainly there are no rarities or alternative tracks or other goodies that have lured fans to latter-day collections of Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys or many others.

None but audiophiles will notice that the red and blue albums, reissued last week, will mark the first stereo appearance on CD of the tracks "All My Loving," "Can't Buy Me Love," "A Hard Day's Night," "And I Love Her" and "Eight Days a Week."

For most people, it's fun to hear Beatles songs in a different order, but that's about the sole pleasure of this and other official posthumous compilations.

After the celebrated CD re-release of the Beatles' 13 albums in their original British configurations five years ago, if a listener wanted to hear his favorite songs in different order, it was made simple through multidisc players and shuffle-play buttons.

The red and blue albums hit the top of the charts when they were released 20 years ago because they were the first new Beatles product since "Let It Be" and marked the first attempts to put out a greatest-hits collection of the group, which had surpassed all others in amassing No. 1 hits.

Still, with all of its material issued separately on CD, there seemed little demand for the red and blue albums, especially after disappointing, overpriced sets such as the 15-disc "E.P. Collection" and the staggeringly wasteful 22-disc "Singles Collection" -- things specifically designed to collect and never to play.

The Beatles catalog represents Capitol's cash cow, though. And money is what the two double-albums are all about.

The 26 tracks on the red "1962-1966" could comfortably fit on one CD, with room to spare for a few tracks from the "1967-1970" blue album that wouldn't fit on a single disc, which can only hold about 76 minutes.

But instead of splitting the albums that way, each collection remains a double-disc collection, even if it means the first CD clocks in at only 31 minutes.

Apple Corps Ltd. is said to have ordered that specific format. It figures, since the only reason they give for it is so it can preserve the original Apple logos -- a full green apple on one disc, a split apple on the other.

The double-discs present a storage problem: the fatter plastic boxes, edged in appropriate color, are used when they could easily fit in a single disc of conventional width (after all, two discs and a thick booklet all manage to fit in the recent slim-width collection of Beatles contemporaries the Dave Clark Five).

But even more of a problem is the pricing. Because each is a double-disc, rather than the $15.98 or $16.98 list for a single CD, each one now lists for $31.98.

Those who wish to replace their vinyl red and blue albums with CD versions will have to shell out more than $65, including tax.

Even the most fervent Beatles fans -- who have continued to praise every artistically questionable post-Beatles move, every Paul McCartney B-side, every Ringo Starr solo tour -- find the pricing unconscionable.